Lord Of The Scars
by chief-jack
Summary: So I read these fanfics, and I thought I'd write a REALISTIC after-island sequel. Alternated between Jack's POV and Ralph's. Read to find out a detailed story of their lives before the island, what they did after, and how close they became.
1. Chapter 1

Jack

Murderer. Jack Merridew, the murderer. He murdered two little kids, did you know? He's a murderer. He's mental. That was what they whispered outside my minuscule grey cell, and it was what I was known as here. A murderer. That was all I would ever be now, all I could ever amount to. A sadistic murderer trapped in the body of a 14 year old boy.

Although technically untrue. I hadn't actually killed anyone; that was all Roger's doing. Roger had smashed meddlesome Piggy's round fat head in and Roger had delivered Simon's final death blow with a stick sharpened at both ends. But I was the ringleader, the chief who hunted little children...

Oh, what did it all matter now? I had participated in the attacks, I had once wanted to feel the blood; hot, unlimited blood, redder than anything I could imagine, flowing over my hands, and that was the unchangeable truth.

All I could do these days was obsess about how I was a killer, same as that long ago time period when I was madly obsessed about hunting. Was that a sign a presentiment of what-must-be? Did the many dead sows signal, did they foreshadow my blood-lust?

My mind tried to work it out feverishly, thinking about the dead pigs, the island, the conch shell that meant nothing, crackling fire and the smoky smell that clung to everything, dead pigs, the island...

"Merridew? Jack Merridew?" I heard her before I saw her. Mrs. Baker, the representative of order and neatness, the very aspects of the person I was before and secretly despised, before the island. Mrs. Baker. Baker, like how the sows had been baked on a stick over a spitting fire, the alluring smell of meat teasing our savage senses, flies circling overhead, waiting for the inevitable leftovers...

I shook my head and tried to escape the nightmarish visions, and instead focused my eyes on the grey wall overhead, determined not to look at her.

"Your schedule. You're fourteen, boy, you need to go to school and behave like a normal citizen. Now here's you hardly younger than the fellows in the army and-' A piece of paper drifted towards the grey bedding, which undoubtedly had today's 'schedule' stamped on, and I ignored it, instead concentrating strongly on the stationary wall overhead. Couldn't anyone see that I wanted to be left alone? A flurry of movement, and the slip was pushed into my limp, unyielding hands. Still she went on:

"Merridew! Pay attention, sit up straight. Your schedule is the most important thing you have, and the rules are-"

Without realizing, I had leapt up from my bed and had crumpled the schedule in one, tight fist. Shaking with unknown anger, I stared insolently at my elder's round, ruddy face.

"Rules! Who needs rules? No-one, that's who! Damn the rules, to hell with the rules! Because-" I was screaming now, my voice verging on hysterics.

"We can get along just fine without them!"

My feet started moving of their own accord, and Ms. Baker's outraged protests echoing in my ears, hollering for Security to catch me, my feet pounding on the cold stone floor and running, just running. I barely gave a thought to the fact that other trapped inmates stared, or that my feet were going numb; it was like running on ice when you're barefoot and not used to exercise. Doctors tried, unsuccessfully, to catch me, but even out of practice, I was a good runner. I shook several of them off, fear coursing through my veins like fire, fast and infectious. I was the hunted now, helpless and nowhere to go. Hadn't I been the chief mere weeks ago? Look at me now. Stumbling, staggering, nearly tripping over my own feet and half blind with fear. Some chief I was. I briefly imagined what would happen if I got caught. Jack Merridew, who died like a pig, unable to save anyone, not even himself.

I could only hear the sound of bare flesh slamming against the floor, banging into walls, and knocking over a rack of sterile equipment. Shouts were meaningless to me and I was even oblivious to the crashing noise of the rack falling, collapsing hard and various bottles of medicine breaking. That is, until my foot caught on an unraveling roll of bandages, and tripped. I stumbled against a heavy wooden door -oak, by the looks of it- to stay upright, and fell in.

It was an abandoned dressmaker's room. There were a couple of moth-eaten beige mannequins swathed in cobwebs, scattered in numerous places, some sporting heads of cheap yellow polyester, others with missing limbs, broken off from the original body. A pile of yellowed outfit ideas, drawn painstakingly neatly onto thick parchment, sat neglected on a nearby desk. I glanced over without much interest, and then my eyes rested on the dusty wardrobe in the corner. _Yes. A hiding place,_ I thought for a second, before I ran over to the huge wardrobe and flung open the wardrobe door. There were silk curtains and scratchy blankets in an unruly heap, piled as high as my chin inside, and I instantly dove into them, locking myself into the darkness and the superficial comfort of something soft, anything soft, encircling my body. I buried my face into one of the silk hangings, and screamed. I wasn't Jack Merridew anymore. I was a mental, horrific murderer.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack

I didn't know how long I stayed there. I screamed, my voice muffled, into the silk until my throat was hoarse, and then I cried out softly for something that I would never have. Humanity.

It was the cold that bought me into my senses. After several months in the sunniest place on earth, the seeping cold felt alien.  
>I wrapped the silk curtains around my shoulders more tightly, thinking of how fortunate it was that they were grey, same as our uniform gowns and every other thing in this place. At least, it would be fortunate if I had any thoughts of leaving this safe haven, which I sure as hell didn't.<br>My eyes made out, in the dim light, the healthy shimmer of my arm, golden and sun drenched, even after weeks in this insane asylum. This was the only physical memoir of the island days, this and a burn where I had burnt myself from the fires. Only two souvenirs. It didn't matter. The mental scars would never leave.  
>Other assets from the island were long since gone. The long, tangled hair that brushed past my eyebrows had been cut off with shears the very minute I had arrived at this place, which was a shame, because if I was going to have to be a savage, I would rather have looked like one.<br>It was funny how healthy my arm looked, anyway. Inside, I was such a screwed up mess, but one look at my arm and you'd never have guessed. Except that the "Mentally Disoriented" bracelet on my left wrist proved it.  
>This insane asylum houses different patients, or as I like to call them, inmates. It's the same thing, since we're all trapped like caged animals. The ones with the "Mentally Disordered" bracelets are the ones with the most heaviest, unrepairable mental scars. That's most of us. They say the insanest people, the ones gone batty, have to wear the bracelet for the rest of their lives, and they can never get out of the asylum. The rest of their existence is marked by the number of times they are experimented by the doctors, prodded and poked at by the sharp faced strangers, plagued by the nightmares and visions for life. I would have a breakdown if I was one of them.<br>I tightened my grip around the bracelet, making the mental dig into my tanned wrist, trying to grapple at the pain to keep me focused. I deserve pain, I think. Pain for the two kids who died on the island.  
>Sharply, suddenly, the smell of blood caught in my nostrils, alerting every sense in my body. I saw red, thick, tainted blood, running like a tiny red river in the desert, down my wrist.<br>It was all I needed.  
>And the horrifying visions started again, undertoned by the demonic, familiar beat...<br>_Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.._.  
>I tried to grasp at my wrist to stop the blood, to stop the nightmare. No...I didn't want...<br>My mind flashed over the images. Percival crying, the signal fire burning out of control, Piggy falling, the naval officer frowning at us all, blue sea, red blood, throwing my black choir robe into the sea in a moment of frenzied excitement, Simon's doe-eyed look, Roger's triumphant sneer, the fire he set raging, eating everything up, blood, blood, blood, Ralph's eyes wide and pleading, Ralph, Ralph...  
>Ralph! My eyes flew open, momentarily distracted from the sickening visions and the gushing blood. He was here. Weren't they all, the biguns whose minds were beyond hospital repair? Ralph, Roger, SamnEric, Maurice? They had to be here. They would understand, they had to. And Ralph... He hated me. He hated me, but I had to find him too, to make him understand, to talk to him.<br>I shakily got to my feet, staggered, and then full out crashed into the door, falling out into the cold stone floor outside. Cursing, I got to my feet again and stumbled to the door, where the sudden light, fluorescent and unnatural, nearly blinded me. 


	3. Chapter 3

Ralph

Time? What was time? In my world, time didn't exist. But then again, I had no world anymore. At least, not my world. It had been torn down a lifetime ago on that place, that paradise, that hell.

They say it was four months ago.

They tell me we spent three months on that island.

I barely registered what the officers told me when I asked them. I didn't know why I asked them. It just seemed to be the right time to ask, breaking the silence, the dullness that hung over our heads on the cold winter shores of England. Especially because my parents took a lifetime to come. It took the pain away, it distracted me from seeing so many; too many, I knew, broken faces and broken families at the reunion.

How had everything in my life, everything, been torn down and destroyed completely? The island, the hunters, the burning and the blood had swept away my identity and left me with nothing. Nothing but a pair of broken, twisted glasses and a jagged, rusty knife that wasn't even mine. Sometimes it took all I was to resist the urge to drive that knife into myself for the overwhelming repentance that shadowed everything, and all I remembered to not toss the cursed specs, his specs, into the fireplace. Because if I had learnt anything from the two months of my past, it was not to meddle with fire. Fire equaled destruction. Fire ate everything up.

And yet, it wasn't fire which had took out both their lives.

It was the beasts. Not the beast we were all afraid of; no, not that made-up fantasy, but the beasts, the monsters, the horrors. The real beasts, the humans. Because it was ourselves that we were so afraid of. That I was still afraid of, that we should all be afraid of. It was the deaths brought to us by humans that we were tortured by most. And it was the humans that could bring about the end as coldly and as swiftly as a flick of the hand, a nod of the head marking a decision. Simon had been onto something, and I regretted that it was only now that I was beginning to understand even a mere glance of the whole picture that was already laid out so clearly in his mind. Piggy had known it, too. Perhaps the people who knew most were the ones who had to leave early. Maybe the people who had already seen the system and already knew how life worked were the ones who left, simply because there was nothing else to see and they were ready to move on.

My thoughts tended to ramble nowadays. Before the island, my thought process was exceedingly simple: one thought, one reasoning, one decision. I used to look at life as a black and white picture; things were either awful or pleasing, people were either evil or good. Never both. Now? Now I looked at life as a picture painted entirely in shades of grey. No trust, twenty types of love and ten times the variables of hate. Grey was such an unfathomable colour. It meant nothing. Grey was smoke, grey could've got us rescued. But really, when it came down to it, was rescue such an important thing? Couldn't it have been the right thing, the better thing to do, to have built our own world and our rules, to shield the little choirboys and all the littl'uns from the greater dangers that existed so painfully and so starkly in this bitter world outside?

_Such as? _A tiny voice in the back of my mind inquired nastily.

Wars. I replied immediately. Big wars, wars that tore families apart.

_But you've had your wars, haven't you, Ralph?_ the voice murmured. _Oh yes, you have. And your wars have been just as bad. Your wars bought down Piggy and Simon, and they all had families somewhere. And you, you took them away, didn't you, with your wars? Don't try to deny that it was a war, because it was. There might not have been a navy or thousands of troops, but there was Merridew, and there was you. There were two sides, always two. And then..._

The voice was getting louder now, getting more insistent with every word, and I listened with a kind of fascinated horror.

_And then you did the same things the beasts did, as the beasts who start the war in that other world did, because you're one of them, aren't you? You're the same as him, as all of them. Do you know why? Because you're all murderers, you're all monsters, you're all savages and you all killed-_

"SHUT UP!" I yelled, lashing out at a random object next to me. It made a loud clanging noise when it hit the wooden floor, but I barely registered the sound. "It wasn't me, I'm not the same as them, I'm not, I didn't-"

My outburst was broken short as I caught sight of two fair headed boys staring at me in amazement. My voice stammered to a halt, and one of the boys tugged at my sleeve. I examined them doubtfully. They were several inches shorter than me, small enough for me to tell that they were at least a year younger than me and they looked completely identical, with fair hair that swept past their eyebrows and very bright brown eyes that peeked out eagerly from under their yellow mops. I stared back at them in confusion. Who were these children?

"Ralph?" one said timidly.

"Listen, Ralph-"

"-Are you alright?"

"Because if you're not-"

"-Well, we were about to ask you if-"

"-If you could help us wash the dishes-"

"-But if you're not feeling very well, we could-"

"-Take you to the nurse and-"

"-Ask somebody else?"

They finished their little speech with a question, and not a statement. Realizing a second too late that they meant me to answer, I looked at one acquisitive face to another and stupidly blurted out,

"What?"

I still couldn't figure out who they were. They looked at each other nervously, looking worried. The boy on the right fiddled with a strand of his hair.

"The dishes, Ralph." the boy on the left explained to me patiently. "We want you to help us with our chores-"

"-That is, if you're not too tired or ill."

"Oh." I knew these two. Something about the way they finished each other's sentences, something in their bright, earnest expressions made me realize who they were. SamnEric. The twins. "I'm not feeling too bad. You know, just...I was thinking. And...and, you know, fatigue and all...that."

I finished with a vague wave of my hand. The boys looked at each other again, obviously concerned for my health and sanity.

"Right, Ralph. But we wanted to ask you if-"

"-You'd help with the dishes. You see-"

"-We've got to finish them by nine thirty, or we'd get-"

"-A demerit."

They looked at me expectantly.

"Sure I will," I nodded. "Lead the way, you two, I don't know where you're supposed to do them."

"Oh, thank you, Ralph-"

"-Thanks ever so much." They beamed at me, all smiles, and I even attempted a wan smile in return. They accepted this amiably enough, and stopping to pick up the urn I had flung to the floor, they led me out of the room.

As I followed them out of the room, I marveled in wonder at how remarkably unchanged they were. As the youngest of us big'uns at ten years old, these two were deemed special pets by the nurses that tended to us here. They were even allowed to keep their shaggy hair, as long as they kept it clean; the rest of us all had to spend a 'good ten minutes to shave all those filthy mops off' with Mrs. Baker with her scissors. They looked the healthiest out of the lot of us. But perhaps that was due to their immense luck.

SamnEric had found their parents; both of them, alive, just last month, and they were over the moon over their good fortune, which explained their sunny, incessant smiles and their small kindnesses.

The rest of us weren't so lucky. The most of the littluns had found their parents, and even if they hadn't, they had been sent to a different sort of orphanage. No, it was only the biguns in this Hospital, and the biguns hadn't be lucky about our parentage; no, not at all. It was discovered that Roger's parents were both dead- air raids, the officials said, although I knew that Roger knew that it was a cover for the fact that his parents had both committed suicide. Maurice's mother was in a different sort of hospital as a result of a heavy head injury during an air raid, and Bill's sister, who was 16 and in a foster home, was the only family he had left. My own father was believed missing, presumably drowned in the navy. Robert's whole family had disappeared. It was going to take months for us to return to the real world.

Not that I minded. Who knew where I'd be transported to if I were to be released? They had everything anyone needed for a lifetime here. I also thought the Head Doctor was a pretty decent man; he didn't try to reassure me that I was safe and the nightmares were naught but a figure of an overheated imagination, like nearly everybody else did, because we both knew it wasn't. Instead, he gently encouraged me to talk about my experiences. I never wanted to, though, and that was fine by him, apparently. Maybe he couldn't quite understand what I had gone through, but at least he didn't pretend like he did. He was real. He was quiet and kind. I liked him. He reminded me of my father. We would sit there, hour after hour, me in my hospital gown, silently staring at a spot in the whitewashed walls of my room, him talking smoothly and softly about his children. He had two of them, Lucy and Simon. Simon. Part of the reason why I found it hard to respond to his ceaseless endeavors to make me talk was because he inevitably reminded me of those two boys we had lost. He wore glasses. His way of gently clutching his plastic clipboard reminded me of the way Piggy held the conch shell. His quiet voice had the faint echo of Simon's. And his five year old son was named after him, too. No - not named after. I knew that it was in no way the Doctor's fault that their names were the same, but it still hurt painfully raw to hear his name, same as I couldn't stop seeing every little boy with a shock of inky black hair as Simon. I think the Head Doctor knew that too, and he refrained from mentioning his son too much.

A moderately clean piece of cloth was placed in my hands, and I was jolted out of my thoughts as the tap shuddered and spat out waterfalls of sloshing water. I nodded placidly along to SamnEric's conversation as they chirped innocently about school projects that were due the next week. A few nods and some monotone yeses were enough to keep them happy and unassuming.

The hospital also had a learning education center, where all the biguns went to daily, all of us except Roger and Jack, both of whom I assumed were being treated as severely mentally disoriented patients elsewhere. It felt slightly unreal studying about geometry and where Christopher Columbus had travelled, but the Head Doctor told me that it was the first step to normality, and I had to say I agreed. At least, it was better than lying around in a hospital room doing nothing, thinking about nothing for endless minutes that blended into hours.

They treated us gingerly, like bombs about to explode at any minute, and that were, in short, exactly what we were. Roger and Jack were still unstable, for one. And I knew for a fact that Winifred had had a mental episode in Biology lesson, and he was still screaming in the therapy room for them to stop cutting him.

They say they were dissecting a pig in the lesson.

We were even in the papers. 'Kids found after playing truant on an island in the Pacific', it screamed on the headlines of one '20 children miss 3 months of school due to a freak attack!' was another newspaper's header. 'Little choirboys rescued after 3 months of disappearance' another front page declared. Didn't they see, couldn't they tell that we were no longer children, choirboys, or little kids? Weren't they able to see that we would be nothing more than beasts for the rest of our lives? It scared me; terrified me, even, how adults could be so oblivious. I wanted to grab them by their necks and show them my memories, all my memories of what happened on that place. Yes, I was the beast now, too. And so were they. They interviewed the naval officer and then slapped all his comments on one page and published it to the public. Nobody bothered to ask our stories. The public were satisfied with that, apparently. Ignore all the horrors that happened right in front of their bloody noses. As long as they were safe, the entire world was safe, as far as they were concerned. The naval officer was safe, 17 of us were safe, and we had all made it back home safely. Simon and Piggy's deaths were hushed up, and their family were dead anyway. But surely the mulberry marked boy's parents would look for him? I thought, but it wasn't a problem, since they never came. The public were assured that we little choirboys were sent to therapy sessions in order to come back fully functioning and healthy, just for a few months. Operations were in progress to contact our parents. Everything was under control, they assured the public, and the public believed. Soon, a story about countries in the Middle East at war soon filled the headlines and all was right again. Unspoken stories lingered in the air while we were sent to this Hospital. Nobody came to visit us, nobody cared. Civilization had failed us again.

What had I expected, then?

"-And apparently Valdez's trying to break out soon-"

My ears instantly caught up on the instant hushed tones of my friends; their voices had the automatic decrease in volume that signaled secrets to be told. My assertions were confirmed in an instant when I caught sight of SamnEric's worried expressions.

"What?" I demanded urgently. "What happened?" They looked even more surprised at my sudden interest; only when it was too late I realized that they had taken me to be listening to their conversations before my outburst.

"Um-" Eric, I thought it was, wavered. Maybe he was considering my mental health conditions again, and perhaps he was considering whether to tell me about whatever it is they were discussing, or maybe he was debating inside his head whether to call the nearest doctor or not. In any case, after a brief nod from his twin, he apparently decided to tell me his news.

"Well- I thought you knew this already, because it's kind of spreading around, but-"

"But apparently Valdez's trying to break out-"

"-Of his cell-"

"Escaping out of the hospital -"

"-By stabbing a doctor-"

"-Stabbing a doctor-"

"-A doctor, Ralph!"

They looked at me with anguished eyes. I was momentarily disoriented by the sudden flow of conversation and I struggled to get my bearings. 

"Who's...who's Valdez?"

They shifted almost guiltily, and then one of them muttered,

"You...you know. R...Roger."

Roger Valdez. Of course. Roger, with his huge glowing amber eyes narrowed into malicious little slits, his typical exotic good looks, his spear and his hate, and oh, his torturing methods. While I was running for my life...I heard...I heard him torturing the others. Screams I'll never forget. Roger, who was capable of killing anybody, who probably wouldn't hesitate to stab the whole Hospital crew if it came to it. Roger Valdez, Jack Merridew's minion.

And now he was going to break out and do what he did best. Stalking his prey, swiping at it, and then moving in for the kill.

"When." my tone was an even monotone, something that I had definitely not expected. Or maybe I was deliberately fighting internally to keep my voice steady. In either case, the twins seemed to recognize the fact that it was addressed to them as a question.

"He says as soon as he can."

"Where did you two hear this?" Now I was an interrogator.

"We were on kitchen duty yesterday-"

"-Over by the psych wards in the East Wing-"

"-Roger was waiting outside an interview room-"

"-For a therapy session, we think-"

"-And then he told us about it all."

There was a pause. Then-

"But why is he doing this now? He's been here for four months now."

They did the creepy twin telepathy thing again.

"You see the thing is, Ralph-"

"-He's been under constant security surveillance-"

"You two sure know a lot of big words now, don't you?" I quipped, smirking. They looked blankly at me again, and I sighed. "Nevermind."

"So, as we were saying-"

"-He's only recently getting permission to move around on his own-"

"-But with tracking bracelets, of course-"

"-And he's hatching this plan."

They looked at me for a moment, and then the boy on the left - Eric, I thought it was- suddenly grabbed at my shoulder.

"Ralph? Is he going to come and kill us again?"

"We couldn't - oh, we can't get tortured like that-"

"-Ever-"

"-You don't know, Ralph, they beat us and beat us until we told you where you were hiding!"

"He's- he's not - I won't let them hurt you!" I burst out. I threw down my washing dish into the sink viciously. Droplets of water splashed onto our hands. "I know you can't go through that again, Sam, Eric, I _know. _Roger and...who else? Jack?"

They stood there, fear trapped in their eyes. God, no. I didn't want to see this happening again.

"Merridew's on this plan, isn't he? He's coming, too?"

I glared, frustrated, from one face to the other. Just as I was finally giving up on them-

"No," A husky voice snarled from the door. "Merridew's not going anywhere."


	4. Chapter 4

Jack

I had found him.

Finally, I had found him after frantic minutes of searching, dodging doctors, avoiding nurses, but now that I had found him, all I could think about was how my feet burnt cold from the icy stone floor and how my body felt heavy because of the drugs they had fed to me earlier, and oh, how my wrist hurt, it really did, even though I could feel the blood drying out on my skin...

My eyes took some trouble fixing on the subject, but I forced my mind to focus on Ralph. There, there he was. Broad-shouldered, sturdy Ralph Henrys stood there with a shocked expression with his two little friends, all washing up duties forgotten.

"He-hello," I panted. "Miss me?"

Why couldn't I ever sound like a normal person and not some pompous brat? I tried to speak again.

"I mean, just, hello." I corrected myself hastily, watching their wary expressions. At least, I thought they were wary. They might've been frightened.

I concentrated on the boy I had come for in the first place, Ralph. His appearance certainly had changed. It struck me how uniform he looked right now. I remembered a boy with dark tanned skin, a very strong build, a tattered shirt that was falling apart and long hair that brushed past his eyebrows and touched his shoulders. I didn't see him. What I got instead was a boy who's golden hair, which had lost some of its former shine, cut into a short, orderly shape, pale skin that violently contrasted with the dark circles outlining his tired looking grey eyes, who was wrapped up in what looked like several layers of clothes. He wore an expression of shock, disbelief and fright all mingled into one, and I somehow felt that I had to put it right. I took a tentative step forward. One of the boys next to him whimpered.

"I came to talk to you. I wanted to speak-" I took another step forward. This time, one of the boys even went so far as to squeak and jump back. Ralph's eyes narrowed and they flitted quickly from their faces to mine.

"Let's just start with a hello, Merridew," he replied tiredly, cutting me off in the middle of my speech. "It's nice to know that you're not on a killing spree right now. Sure you got the time to spare?"

"Ralph," I spoke softly, walking towards him. "I've changed."

**Sorry that it's super-short, I'm just really busy with my schoolwork lately. ..I would've thought that the last long entry by Ralph would've made up for it, but don't freak out, because I've filled three notebooks with this story and I'm still writing it! It's probably going to be around thirty chapters? Yep, long. And thank you all so much for all the reviews, messages and story/author alerts, you guys have no idea how much I appreciate it. (Mia also doesn't know how to reply to her reviews) I'll update more in a few days!**


	5. Chapter 5

Ralph

Nobody was allowed to see how frightened I was at Jack Merridew's reappearance, nobody. I had to protect SamnEric, at the very least, and how could I do that if they knew that I was scared of Jack? To them, I was still their leader, and I guess that never really changed. I was still masquerading as the one in charge, and now Jack had come to demolish me again. That was how it worked. That was how it always worked.

But he wasn't going to hurt these two; not today.

I trained my eyes on my enemy, silently following his every move and calculating when he was going to strike. Jack, changed? Of course Merridew hadn't changed. Even his appearance remained somewhat the same as he did on the island. He still had his red hair, and his skin was still golden brown and freckled. He was also still tall and stocky. But when I looked into his eyes, I saw that maybe, just maybe, he had changed. His once bright blue eyes were clouded from all the drugs they no doubt fed him, and he had a hopeless, despairing look on his face that I didn't quite understand. For some reason, he was clutching a bunch of silk curtains over one shoulder and he was barefoot.

Hunters, look at what your chief's reduced to, I thought with a cold and mirthless smirk. Do you really want this bedraggled boy to lead you any longer? He's probably deranged and out of his mind.

Jack took my smile as an invitation to come forwards, and I instantly snapped into my senses.

Don't come any closer.

"I don't believe you." I said to him.

To my relief, he stopped.

"Why?" he asked. It was such a simple, innocent, frankly idiotic question that I felt I had to put him straight. Momentarily forgetting my fear, I crossed the space between us in a few sweeping footsteps and faced up to a bewildered Jack Merridew.

"Why?" I imitated him. "Why? Because why would you ever, ever change from being a bloody thief and a swine? You'll always be like that! And-" I grimaced. "I know what you came here for,"

"I told you. I came here to apologize-"

"GO AWAY!" I yelled in his face. "DON'T YOU EVEN TRY TO LIE TO ME! It's not going to work! We've been here before, and you haven't changed. But you know what? This time, you're not going to lay a single finger on these two. I owe them that much."

"You don't understand!"

"Don't try and tell me that I don't understand!" I snapped at him.

"I didn't come to hurt you or the twins!" he replied, automatically raising his hands as a mark of peace, but I wasn't to be fooled again. Besides, I saw that his hands were covered in a dark, sticky substance that looked suspiciously like blood, It had dried thickly on his wrist, leaving him with a sinister effect. Of course he was going to try and kill them or worse. It was what he did best.

"You did," I said, staring pointedly at his hands. Jack blushed at my gaze, and thrust his wrist at me.

"This isn't what it looks like! Look, I accidentally cut myself with my bracelet-"

I stared down at his "Mentally Disoriented" bracelet. Mentally disoriented? That had to explain all of this. Perhaps this was one of his ravings.

"You actually expect me to believe that?" Jack stopped talking, and I went on. "Just get away, Jack. Go away, before I call security, and you'll be locked up!" My voice ended my little outburst an octave higher than usual. This was actually a lie; The nearest security bell that I knew of was out in the corridor, and I'd never make it there in time. I could only hope that Jack fell for my bluff.

"You wouldn't - you can't call security from here," he reasoned.

A voice behind me surprised us both.

"Yes he can," Sam -or was it Eric?- squeaked, his eyes round. "There's a security help button on our bracelets."

Sweet. I turned triumphantly to Jack, whose eyes widened with fear. Instantly, I was caught off-guard.

Fear? I thought, my mouth involuntarily curling into an ironic sneer again. It seemed almost years ago that our positions were reversed. On the island, I had been in constant fear of Jack, of what he would do if he caught me. To be honest, I still felt that way; I was still scared of Jack, of what he was capable of doing. I just didn't stop to think that he was scared, too. But the fear from the island would always be there, and Jack had planted the seed of terror in my nightmares, the seed which then grew to become a flower, the roots digging irreversibly into the depths of my mind. Fear was not what I expected to see on Jack Merridew's lying, scheming face. How dare he come around after everything that had happened, playing for sympathy? He had no right, after demolishing the rules we had made, after murdering Simon and Piggy, after capturing the twins...

It was anger that bought me to fumble around my bracelet and made me press the button, and it was anger that made me press it without hesitation. But what frightened me the most was when Jack called my name, pleaded with me to listen; when a guard jabbed at his arm with a sedative and he crumpled to the ground, I didn't feel anything at all.


	6. Chapter 6

Jack

The red devil was chasing me with death sticks of burning fire. I was running. It was dark; everywhere I looked was a empty, infinite black, and I couldn't see where I could run to. All I knew in my sub consciousness was that the devil was going to burn me with the torches, ad that if I got caught I would meet a fate worse than death. The red devil's face was unknown to me, because whenever I turned to catch a glimpse of his features, he kept his face hidden by raising the fire over his head. Somehow, that made it worse.

The place looked, or rather, felt like the island. There was that faint smell of the succulent mangoes and fruit in the air, combined with the scent of sea brine. Oddly enough, the sea-salt smell seemed to be strengthening with each step I took. Was I nearing the beach? How did I even know there was a beach anyway?

Maybe you're not on the island, I argued with myself: and yet, I knew.

I ran and ran, desperate to get away from the devil, but my legs would not cooperate and the sand - so it was the beach after all, and this was the island, as I had predicted - tugged at my feet. I was slowly but surely slowing my pace, until It was only a few meters away. My vision swayed dangerously, and before I could do anything - cry out, shout, support myself with my arms, anything - I collapsed onto the shores of the beach, tripping over something. A lukewarm something. To my horror, I saw that I had just fallen over a fresh corpse.

I let out a silent whimper as I caught sight of his face. He was another someone I had killed. Simon...

Gone was the trademark serene expression he wore and the honest soul expressed in his eyes. Gaping holes that looked as if they had been gouged out took the place of the eye sockets where there were once bright green eyes, and they stared right at me, wide and unseeing, but knowing. Always knowing. Simon now sported large dark gashes in every possible area of his body and even on his face, gashes that poured blood that glinted in the dim light. His lips were coated in blood and curved upwards in an inhumane, savage, twisted smirk that seemed to mock me coldly. But worst of all was the spear sticking out of his chest, a stick sharpened at both ends...

I was too busy hyperventilating at the sorry corpse of Simon, too busy fearfully watching his face for some kind of movement to be aware of the reappearance of the red devil until it was too late, until there was nowhere to run. It was a mere half metre away from me now, holding out the flaming torch ready to brand the mark of flames onto my skin. I could feel the intense heat radiating from the stick he yielded, torridity rolling off me in waves, and I saw everything around me lit up by the fire, tinted in garish shades of red and orange.

And then something which I had both been anticipating and dreading, happened.

It turned his terrible, fiery head to face me.

I couldn't find the voice to scream; I was terrified and yet I was too paralyzed to even whimper. I knew that face. Didn't I see those blue eyes every day in the mirror? Because, oh, it was I who was the red devil, it had always been me. It was crouched down in a weird, animal-like crouch, ready to pounce, its spear aligned with my throat and its teeth bared, startlingly white against the grime of it's horrible red and brown mask of grime. The devil was an exact mirror image of me, only with blood streaked on my face and circling, like some great and terrible red kohl, my eyes. And my eyes; they were the worst of it all. The bright blue was curdled with deep, painful hatred and resentment, combined with the furious urge to kill, to destroy everything. It's face - or my face- was contorted into that familiar mask of savagery and triumph, arm raised to deliver the death blow. It opened its mouth to speak, but only a nonsensical jumble of growls and snarls came out.

And I finally found my voice.


	7. Chapter 7

Jack

I woke up screaming, my entire body coated in a sheen of sweat, back in my bed again. The red devil...Simon's corpse… My mind started to dwell on the nightmares again, as it always did. I couldn't stop myself from recapping my horrific dreams; it just became routine for me to wake up every night shivering from the cold and the heat of the nightmares. I didn't even know why I bothered to yell out, anymore, when I knew the other nightmares would come to me when I woke up. This nightmare was a first, though. The mot reoccurring dream was where all the Island boys, even my hunters, were turning me out, Roger elected as the new chief, them all shunning me, and then eventually burning me on the stake like a hunted witch...

Once again, I tried to grapple at something normal, something ordinary that would help me escape from the clutches of the nightmares. This was routine, too.

My eyes swiveled wildly around the room and I dimly registered that I was in my own cell at the Asylum once more, with no sign of the silk curtains I had carted around with me after m escape from Mrs. Baker which led me to think that the previous day's adventure had not been wholly existent. Real or not real?

I frowned as I tried to make sense of recent events. I had hid in a wardrobe...I'd seen Roger...something about Roger? No... I tried to dig my metal bracelet into my wrist to help me think, only to discover that someone had replaced my metal bracelet with a crudely fashioned yellowed rubber band, and that a sterile white bandage had been wound tightly around both my wounds so that there was no danger of me cutting myself. Real, then. The clean white of the bandages looked so wrong against my dirty, bloody golden wrist. Why not wrap me up in bandages all over, like a mummy? I thought sarcastically.

Roger? Simon? The twins? I had been taken down by some heavyset guards in navy uniforms, and Ralph had looked at me like I was nothing, like a statue, emotionless and stock still.

Ralph... I had been seeking Ralph in a desperate bid for freedom, and it had chilled me to the very core to see him greet me like a murderer, like an insane maniac. Which of course, I was. I was, after all, Jack Merridew, a juvenile criminal, and it wasn't like I had been expecting to be taken up and accepted with open arms, but a greeting like that… well, it was definitely to be assumed that Ralph wasn't about to forgive and forget anytime soon.

But I knew that if I was going to do no good in my life, which I undoubtedly was, I was going to at least set things right with Ralph and the others. I owed them that much and I wasn't going to rest until I did so.

Which, I soon found out, was easier said than done; once I discovered that there was no way out of my cell.

Further inspection told me that the door was locked and the windows were winded tightly shut. I sank to the floor, muttering the worst swear words I knew and knocking a pile of books over with my callused bare foot. How was I supposed to get out now? Before long, a nurse would come to collect me and cart me off to the Asylum school where-

-Where Ralph would be.

The realization hit me like a ton of bricks. Of course. All the biguns were daily commuters to the Asylum school, and had their lessons there. I didn't want to. I really, really did not want to go to school. It wasn't that I couldn't keep up with the workload. It was just that school bought back bad memories of the life I had led before the whole Island incident happened. But if going to school meant that I could talk to Ralph, then so be it. I was going to school.

**Yep, I changed the title because I realized that 'Bruised Memories' didn't really make any sense…so now it's short n' snappy. Anyway, I'm totally spoiling you guys now – two chapters (even two short ones) in two days! As always, thank you all for reviewing and faving. Love you guys! Anonymous reviews are also welcome, so please spread this fanfiction to as many people as possible, since I love hearing other people's opinions. Watch out for a lot of Jack in the next few updates, and more angsty dialogue that I know you readers all secretly love. Also, kudos to you if you notice some allusions to a very famous series that's hitting the big screen this March. Excited? I know I am. **

**XOXO, Gossip Girl**

**(oops, there's another book reference. GG is my guilty pleasure.) **


	8. Chapter 8

Jack

It had been easy. Simple, really, getting registered for school. In fact, the nurses had been delighted when I told them and even Mrs. Baker had given me an approving nod, muttering that maybe I would turn out to be a halfway decent citizen after all. I didn't have to buy a uniform because the school was run by the Asylum, so our hospital gowns counted as uniform; the grey knee length stiff cotton tunics and the polyester trousers were what we boys were supposed to wear. Girls, although there were few in the Asylum, fared slightly better with the same tunic and a cotton skirt that fell a few inches below the knee.

The uniforms were like the ones we had in my old choir, the Troubadours. They made me reminiscent of the good times I had shared with my fellow choirboys; the fact that our love of music brought us together, and not because of skill or social status was what I missed about it the most. Here, the only thing that bonded all us 'disturbed children' in this Asylum was our nondescript uniforms and the comforting fact that we were all insane. Very encouraging, but it was all we had and it was all we would receive.

My musical musings were cut short once I rounded a corner on the outside corridor a few staircases and a hallway away from my private cell, and set my eyes on the Educational Unit Center, or more commonly known as the EUC. (They were still keeping tabs on me by the way. I was allowed to wander alone, but I had to keep a large, clunky anklet on me that automatically tracked my position). The EUC was situated in a rather large red brick, three storeys building in the East Wing of the Asylum, just outside the main building. There were dormitories for the regular kids who went there in another building somewhere: not that it mattered. I wouldn't be seeing them anyway. I wouldn't make friend with anyone. I was here to seek out Ralph Henrys.

"Pass, please?"

I looked up. A middle aged woman with obviously dyed platinum blonde hair was sitting behind an office counter marked "Reception" on my right, tapping her long red nails on the table and staring at me.

"I- I don't have a pass."

The lady clicked her teeth disapprovingly. "Well, we'll have to register you in for a liberal session at lunch, then, wouldn't we?"

I had no clue what she was talking about. I hadn't met any of the boys from my choir for over three months, not since the island, and I hadn't had the chance to talk to any of them about such trivial things like school, in any case. What the hell was a liberal session, anyway?

"Hello?" She said rudely, waving her fingers in my face. "If you don't mind, it's already ten minutes before your Assembly. Either you have a pass or you don't."

An assembly.

"I-I-" I stammered out, backing away. My heart hammered inside my chest, and suddenly it was hard to breathe. Assembly Assembly Assembly. One step back, and then another. Run. Run run run. Kill. Away from the Assembly and the group. I was Chief. Run. I was the Chief and I was going to find the animal and kill it. Ralph. Chief. Kill.

No.

"Merridew?" a brisk voice called out from the direction which I had come, snapping me out of my blind panic attack. Stolid Mrs. Baker, endearing in her familiar nurse uniform was carrying a big armful of documents and worksheets, walking towards us. I don't think I could've been happier to see her.

"Merridew?" she repeated, completely oblivious to my relief, and, thankfully, to my inner turmoil. "What on earth are you doing here? You should already be in your lessons, you foolish boy!"

"This student's lost his pass, Pomona! You know how we can't let in students who don't have permission passes; it's part of the new school policy!" the reception woman was arguing. slammed her stack of filed documents on the counter and took out a folded paper from her apron pocket.

"This," she said stonily, prodding me in the back, "Is Jack Merridew. Merridew's a new addition to our current Year Nine class, he's been held back a year due to unfortunate circumstances- it's all on his medical form here-"

"Medical form?" the reception woman repeated、her eyes wide. "Oh- I didn't know he was, um, from the medical wing-"

"The psych wing." Mrs. Baker corrected.

I wanted to strangle her.

The woman slowly ran her eyes over the form, her eyes widening even more as she no doubt read of my island experience. I hated the fact that this rude, tacky woman who I'd only met a few minutes ago was having complete, absolute access to everything I'd done on that goddamned island. Goddamn it. I closed my eyes for what seemed like an eternity until she spoke again.

"Jack Merridew, you're to go straight to your class, 9A. Someone will be sent to show you around tomorrow; for now all we want you to do is to take some assessment tests for us to get a firm grip on your academic level. Um…your class is the second door from the left on that corridor, you'll find it soon enough. You should hurry if you want to resume a normal schedule tomorrow."

I thanked her stiffly, and moved on.

"Who was that?" a curious female voice whispered from the back of the office, and the secretary whispered, "One of the island boys."

My fingers involuntarily curled into fists at my sides. It was always like this; the staff always called us the island boys. Always the same phrase in the same hushed tone of voice. I hated it, hated it.

I wondered if any of the other boys that had crashed on the island with me still remembered. I mean, they had to, didn't they? Nobody who had experienced those horrors we had faced would've dared to forget. They couldn't have.

All the same, if they'd been released from constant confinement weeks before I had...

Shut up, Merridew, I chided myself inside my head. They had to remember everything, didn't they? Surely they did. Surely...

I repeated this in my head over and over, not entirely sure whether I believed myself or not, or what the consequences would be if I didn't.

**Edit: sorry this is so late! I've been so busy with finals and the new school year and all that I simply haven't had the time lately to type it all out. Big kisses to everybody who reviewed and faved this story (can't believe I got so many faved story alerts; you guys rock!) And I will be updating more soon x**

**P.S. For those of you who didn't get it, I was alluding the 'Real or not real?' line that Ralph questions in Chapter 7 to Peeta and Katniss' game in The Hunger Games. I saw the movie, by the way, and I loved it! **


	9. Chapter 9

Ralph

My life at school was, in principle, not much different than the school I had attended at before the evacuation and that island plane crash. I still had the same old lessons, there were still crazy hunts for missing textbooks and satchels that somehow landed themselves into the caretaker's closets, in the staff room, in the girl's lavatory. There was always that one obnoxious kid who found it acceptable to yell out obscene comments during class. Nothing really had changed. Schools, I soon found, as well as the rest of the real world, rarely changed. The same tired things happened over and over again. The same tired things worked their way into radio broadcasts and newspapers. In the end, nothing really changed.

But I had, and that made all the difference.

Call me batty, but what surprised me the most about school was the kids who had crashed with me on the island, especially the hunters. Except now they weren't hunters anymore; they were back to being choir boys. But you see, that was the thing; everyone reverted easily back to their old selves, their angelic boys facade so easily that I sometimes wondered if I was the crazy one, as if I hadn't tried to regain order on that blasted island. But I had, hadn't I? And if there was one thing I was grateful about in yesterday's encounter with Jack, it was that the meeting proved that I wasn't the only boy who still remembered every detail of what I did on those fateful days as vividly as though they were from yesterday. Come to think of it, I remembered the island days better than I remembered things I did minutes ago. My mind isn't what it used to be, if you will. But even with that taken in account, it shocked me to see how easily people forget.

Take, for example, Maurice and Robert. Ever the two jokers (although Maurice was most likely the actual pranker, with his dark skin and laughing hazel eyes, compared to russet haired, grey eyed Robert, who always looked serene and calm), they were already up to their usual jokes and pranks. Save for the occasional prolonged sidelong glance at me, coupled with a few secretive laughs, they had already forgotten about what they had done on the island. Probably because they were on Jack's side, I thought vindictively, because they were the ones doing the torturing instead of being the tortured. And any blame they would've felt could have been slid onto Jack, the ringleader, couldn't it? They need never feel any remorse for what they had done.

_It wasn't their fault,_ that voice whispered inside my mind, _it was yours._

Shut up, I thought angrily, just shut up! It was every bit their fault as it was theirs!

To block the voice from my mind, I put extra vigor into clearing away my textbooks and school supplies into my brown leather satchel, distributed by the EUC school board. I couldn't stop thinking about it, though; I was constantly comparing everything, absolutely everything to the island. I couldn't stop, it was as if that notion had already been set into me - an idea set in stone.

So there I was. Musing about the island, downright normal for me but probably terrifying for anyone else. That is, if somebody could read my mind, which I was sure couldn't happen.

Would it frighten you? I thought, staring aggressively into the face of my form tutor as I slunk into class, five minutes early for my third period. Would you run away screaming if you knew what I think about every day?

"Ralph?"

A timid voice interrupted my reverie, and I looked up, startled, to find my form tutor looking cautiously at me. Maybe I'd been a tad too aggressive.

"Er - sorry," I apologized, blinking. "I was just... you know, thinking."

She nodded apprehensively.

"Um. You're supposed to report to Mrs. Baker in ten minutes - something about a new pupil, I think. You're supposed to show him around, all of the other hall monitors are busy, so you'll have to do."

"That'll be fine," I was secretly relieved - I didn't feel like sitting through another History class watching Maurice and Robert make wisecracks to the teacher, and what harm could an obedient new kid be? "I guess I should go, then."

My form tutor smiled back. "If it's alright with you, Ralph. You can catch up on History class later."

Great. Maurice sat next to me in class, and fat chance he took notes in any class. I groaned internally as I was about to head off to escort the new boy, when I realised something.

"Oh - Miss?" I turned around. "What classroom should I go to?"

"Class 9A."


	10. Chapter 10

Ralph

"Fancy seeing you here again, Merridew," I leant against the door frame, arms folded tightly, fighting internally to keep my face a cool, indifferent mask. I wasn't thinking about History class or Maurice or anything in particular anymore. Seeing Jack again had taken care of that, and now I felt nothing but anger. I was nothing like the charade, fake Ralph I put on, though. I was angry and frustrated and terrified and mortified and, and...

Maybe I wasn't as stable as I had assumed.

Still, I thought with a confused frown, what the bloody hell was he doing inside a quaint little secondary school? Granted, it was an institution for troubled kids, but when I thought about how Jack Merridew spent his time, all the images I could conjure up of were dark, damp cells lit with flickering, eerie candles, the smell of damp in the air...

He's thirteen, a distinctly annoying voice argued in the back of my mind. He's still a kid...

Yeah, and I suppose all 'kids' are allowed to murder innocent people, I countered sarcastically, he killed Simon, and he killed Piggy...

_Well, so did you_, the little voice reminded me. _You were there, you took part, remember the flames and the fire and the spears._..

"Shut up!" I roared suddenly, making Jack jump. He raised his head to look at me like I was crazy. Maybe I was. Of course I was.

"I didn't say anything,"

I scowled at him, momentarily forgetting my supposed cool demeanor.

"I know. It's nothing."

"Oh."

I waited for him to make a cutting remark, a classic contemptuous Merridew look, and an arrogant toss of his head to remind the world that HE would never talk to himself, that HE was above such childish play. But nothing followed, except him quietly lowering his head and delicately averting his eyes. I blinked, sure that I had missed one of his audacious tics, a sign that Jack Merridew, the real, cold, high and mighty chief himself was seated before me. Nothing. Could it be true? Could anyone like him transform into a new person? I couldn't be sure, and in any case, I wasn't quite ready to forgive him for the deaths of my friends.

"Aren't you ever going to stop hounding me?" I glowered at him fiercely, to which he shot a cautious glance at my icy profile.

"Never," he whispered apprehensively, his sky blue eyes, eyes so bright they hurt to look at, fixed on my own ones.

Great. Now I had an obsessive, blue-eyed 14 year old stalker on my hands.

"Lovely," I let the sarcasm seep into his mind while I worked out some things out inside my head. Planning my next move. I figured that if Jack was so desperate to see me, I could use it to my own advantage. I could use it to weasel the truth out from him.

"So," my voice automatically lowering a little, "What other business except for stalking are you here for?"

Jack cast his brilliant eyes on me again. They were wild and agonised: a look that I recognized all too well from the island. They were the eyes of a mentally unstable tribal chief. Did he want my help? Or was this one more of his manipulative mind games? I was tired of them; tired of them all.

"I wanted to talk; I wanted to...to apologize..."

Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming tiredness, and just at that moment, all I wanted to do was to lie down and fall into a never-ending sleep, without any crazy choir boys who wanted to apologize, without any forgetful twins to bother me, a long sleep sans the nightmares to haunt my every move at night. Wasn't there a fairytale about that, in one of the books my father had given me long ago?

My mind was wondering, and that wasn't what I wanted. I tried, unsteadily, to focus on the tall, youth in front of me, now standing, facing me like an equal. The boy who wanted forgiveness for his irreversible deeds.

I didn't want to listen to him asking for forgiveness. I just wanted Jack to leave and never return, just so I could forget. Amnesia seemed like the perfect solution right now. Would nothing ever become normal, would I ever regain my innocence?

"Leave Jack," I said thickly.

He looked bewildered and, I couldn't help noticing, disappointed.

"But-you were the one who came in-"

"I was sent to-to look after you," I wrinkled my nose at the satirical phrase. Look after the boy who had tried to kill me? How ironic. "Look after the new boy kind of thing..."

Jack opened his mouth, and then clamped it shut again.

"But that was before I knew it was you! You killed my best friend and you think you'll be forgiven by just saying SORRY?" I was shaking now, with a mixture of incomprehensible emotions. "Well, you're wrong, Merridew. Completely wrong. You tried to kill me, remember? I'm the boy you tried to kill," I flashed him a dark parody of a smile, then went on. "Look, here's your chance. Oh, I forgot, you don't do anything without a safe back-up of savages behind you, do you?"

I swept over to where he was standing and shoved him so hard that he sent a fine number of desks and chairs flying. Jack himself remained standing, but seemed severely shaken at my violent outburst. He had no trouble avoiding my gaze now. The thought made me irrationally angrier.

"DO YOU!?" We were now nose to nose, eye to eye. "Leave me bloody alone! You're not wanted and you never will be, you coward, you beast, you-" I glared at him, at loss for words. I fumbled in my mind for the right weapon to destroy him. I had the power to break a person now, and it felt exhilarating.

"Piggy won't forgive you! Simon won't forgive you!"

But even as I yelled the words at him, I knew that they weren't true. Piggy's feelings aside, I knew, just knew deep inside me, that Simon wouldn't have let old grudges stand in the way of understanding each other and, eventually, forgiveness. Why couldn't i think like him, why couldn't I be like Simon? A tornado of self-hate swirled up inside me, and just as suddenly, all the fight in me deflated.

"And I...I.." words failed me again. "I won't..." to my horror, I found that my face was wet. I choked back tears, not being able to speak. Through blurry eyes, I dimly registered Jack's concerned face, absurdly deaf to the harsh realities I had thrown in his face.

"Just...leave," I looked away from him. Shame burnt through me like a fire, like the fire of destruction that inevitably ate up everything. "Please."

I just about held it together until I heard footsteps fading away and the door closing. Then I collapsed into an undignified heap onto the stone ground, crying at the sheer injustice of it all. Of everything. It had backfired on me, as usual. Why wasn't I strong enough to face up to Jack properly, why couldn't I be like Simon, or even Piggy, who never let anything tear him up? Why couldn't...

Simon, I thought desperately, I'm sorry.

I didn't know how hard it would be to move on. Not until today. Now, suddenly, in the form of one red headed boy, I knew what it felt like to be torn up, slashed, and left to die.

I was broken.


End file.
